The present invention relates to prepaid financial accounts, such as payroll card accounts, that are preloaded with funds prior to their use by the consumer.
One example of the use of prepaid financial accounts is payroll card accounts. There are millions of employees who do not have checking accounts at banks but receive pay in the form of payroll checks. To cash those payroll checks, the employee must typically go to a check cashing service where a fee is charged to cash the payroll check. This is a particularly disadvantageous process for the affected employees.
Payroll card accounts were developed to address the problem of payroll checks. Instead of receiving a payroll check, an employee could receive a payroll card from an employer, which is periodically loaded with funds reflecting the employee's pay. The employee could then go to a bank or an ATM to withdraw funds, or could use the payroll card like a credit card to purchase goods and services directly at a merchant.
Prepaid financial accounts are also useful in other contexts. For example, a prepaid financial account can be used to control consumer spending. In one instance, a son or daughter may not be entrusted with a credit card account but, for convenience reasons, may be given a prepaid payment card linked to a prepaid financial account, which may be periodically loaded with needed funds by a parent. As such, the consumer may avail himself of the conveniences of electronic payment, but is limited to funds that already exist on the account balance.
Although the prepaid financial accounts are effective, a number of improvements could be made. For example, different types of prepaid financial accounts exist that have different account features and limitations. For example, some types of prepaid payment cards (and their associated accounts) are only capable of being reloaded with funds a limited amount of times, while other types of prepaid payment cards can be reloaded an unlimited number of times. After the set number of reloads, a consumer with a limited reload payment card must obtain another card. Similarly, some prepaid payment cards (and their associated accounts) are only capable of being used at an automatic teller machine (ATM), while other prepaid payment cards can conduct credit card transactions. Moreover, some prepaid payment cards (and their associated accounts) may be personalized to a consumer while other cards are not. Therefore, it would be desirable to automatically migrate a consumer from one prepaid financial account to another prepaid financial account based on preset criteria to, for example, anticipate the consumer's need or reward the consumer's behavior.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.